“URG!” Grunting from the pain of stabbing her own chest, Shiro gritted her teeth and ripped her heart.
Not only was her body currently destroying herself with the berserk skills, but the Gorgon had even managed to petrify some of her insides.
Crushing the now stone heart in her hands, nanobots surged within her palm as she created a nanotech heart for now in order to stay alive.
Gritting her teeth, Shiro quickly flickered out of sight as she slammed her palms down.
*BANG!!!!
Sending out a shockwave of cold mist, the surrounding area was instantly converted to a frozen tundra. The blizzard blocked out the sun while the snow obscured her movements.
‘Damn snake!’ Shiro cursed while surveying her surroundings. Since her heart was hastily constructed, she hadn’t been able to calibrate it properly so it was akin to shoving a top tier engine into an old car. While it may run decently for a while, problems are bound to show up soon. Not only that, her berserk skills had a limited activation time. Once that ran out, she was dead for sure.
Swiping her hand in the air, she summoned her Soul Sword and dashed towards the gorgon.
‘Takemikazuchi Technique!’
Activating the technique, lightning started to flow across the blade of her soul sword.
On top of the Takemikazuchi Technique, Shiro also activated her Hollow Deceit along with Kietoma to make sure that the gorgon could not resist.
With several phantom versions of her assisting in this attack to confuse her enemy, Shiro narrowed her eyes and slashed towards the gorgon.
Before the sword could land however, Shiro felt danger assault her senses once more and changed locations with a secondary phantom.
*KRRRR!!!!
Just as she did this, a purple radiance erupted out of the gorgon’s hands and turned everything within a 100 meter cone in front of her to stone. Her phantoms were immediately dispersed after being killed, leaving only two other phantoms that barely managed to dodge out of the way.
“Tch!” Clicking her tongue, Shiro created an ice platform under her foot in order to give her that extra boost.
*PUCHI!!!!!
Slashing her sword across the gorgon’s skin, scales were sent flying as blood poured out. However, she wasn’t done yet.
Flexing her fingers, a shotgun was formed within her hands as she jammed it into the gorgon’s flesh.
Pulling the trigger, Shiro used the recoil to flip off the gorgon’s body.
Swiping her hands, another wall of metal erected in front of her, blocking her from the gorgon’s view so that she wasn’t petrified.
Unfortunately, she could feel her body weakening continuously as the initial boost from the berserk skill was being worn out.
‘I need something to kill her in one go.’ She thought calmly as anger and haste would only ruin things at the current state.
Quickly glancing through her stats, her eyes locked onto a skill that she hadn’t used often but could prove to be a real game changer. The Chimera Arts.
It was a skill that allowed her to fuse two elements together for a short time. If she was to activate this skill and use her Celestial Garden on top of that, the end result should be quite astounding.
However, that wasn’t enough. Right now, she needed something so volatile that it would eventually destroy the gorgon’s body down to its very core. She still had the unrecognisable skill that she had developed last time in the dungeon but that was a little too risky.
Thinking up to this point, a reckless idea appeared in her mind. But the mere thought of this idea disgusted her to no end.
‘…F*ck it. It’s either this or death.’ She gritted her teeth and clasped her hands together.
Crafting the strongest defence she could around her, so that she could have a moment to act on her outrageous idea, she sat down for a moment and activated Eena’s second cast that converted 50% of her highest stat into raw power. This made it so that she only had 30 seconds to do whatever she needed to do.
‘I should be able to do this within 20 seconds, giving me 10 seconds to deal with the gorgon.’ Shiro thought to herself before activating the magic circle around her.
Recoiling from the pain, she could feel her consciousness fade for a moment as her nanotech heart started to infest her body with nanobots.
This was similar to what the scientists had done back when she was in Aria. Right now, she was essentially converting her entire body into a weapon so that she could continuously use her Chimera Art skill through her self modification.
Inserting several skill ch.i.p.s into her now mechanical body, she started to fuse her elements one by one.
Cosmic Ice + Apocalyptic Lighting, Stygian Steel + Astral Rift and so on. As the list continued to shrink, the elements started to run rampant within her body. Forced to constantly repair her mechanical prosthetics, Shiro hoped that she could last just long enough for this to work. And finally, at the 20 second mark, she succeeded.
[Attunements: -(Error)- – Tier (Error)]
Not caring about the fact that her fusion of elements resulted in an error, Shiro quickly crafted a specialised railgun and inserted a portion of the new element within the camber and aimed it towards the gorgon that had been trying to break her defences with large success. Dismissing the walls, she watched as the gorgon started to petrify her body once more.
However, it didn’t matter anymore as this was her final stand.
“No one liners for you, snake b*tch.” Shiro cursed and pulled the trigger.
*BOOM!!!!!!
Within a single second, the world seemed to half as the fabric of space started to twist around the gorgon that had been shot by her gun. Her skin started to break apart before regenerating back to its original state over and over again while the rest of her body was the same.
Panic washed over the gorgon as she reached out desperately only for her arm to contort and break off.
Watching the gorgon break down within her eyes, Shiro quickly had the nanobots consume as much of her body as they can before activating the Lire Rune on her sword.
Crumbling to dust, the sword faded from her hands as a wave of vitality and energy washed over Shiro, repairing her body back to its pristine condition.
Just before her berserk state ends, she stood up and reached her hand towards the gorgon. She could feel that there was one more step that she could do with her new element.
Gritting her teeth, she dragged her hand back slowly as if trying to rip something out from the gorgon.
Spasming from the pain, the gorgon tried to stop Shiro but a wall was summoned between them once more.
Tears started to fall from the gorgon’s eyes as she knew that whatever was going to happen was much worse than death.
But before she could cry out, something seemed to snap within her core being.
Within Shiro’s hands, was a floating orb of densely packed numbers and letters that were unrecognisable. Rows upon rows of these letters swirled in all directions as Shiro was suddenly bombarded by countless notifications from her system.
Within this horde of notifications, a single one stood out to her.
[Gorgon Entity Code Extracted.]
Unable to make sense of this, Shiro shook her head and wanted to get away from the location for now.
Unfortunately for her, just as she took a few steps from the area, a wave of pain assaulted her mind, knocking her out and forcing her body to crash against the ground.
Affected by the backlash of numerous berserk skills, Shiro had no choice but to allow her body to try to salvage the situation as she drifted out of consciousness.
###
Watching from her own realm, Estrella could only stand in silence as her mind was in a state of shock.
Remembering how it felt when the previous queen died and watching her race get enslaved, Estrella never wanted to rely on a figurehead ever again. However, seeing Shiro’s performance, her mind could only turn towards the thought of hope once more.
Perhaps she could succeed where the last queen had failed. Perhaps she could take the spirit race to new heights. Perhaps, for the first time in countless years, she could finally be spared of having her hopes crushed in front of her.
‘Is it ok to trust this que- no, this empress? Despite how many have come before her, is it ok for me to trust in one more queen?’ Estrella thought to herself as she closed her eyes for a brief moment. Fighting back her tears, she waved her hand and opened a portal.
Now that she had found someone she could put her final hopes into, she was going to make sure that Shiro survived no matter what. Once her survival is guaranteed, Estrella didn’t mind offering up her own life in order to repent for her actions.
‘Please survive.’ Estrella prayed earnestly while teleporting everyone next to Shiro.
